by John Benteen
Fargo seized the jaw bridle’s rein. “Easy,” he rasped. “There’s nothing you can do. Not a damned thing.”
“But the work of years—They’re burning my cabin! It’s all going up in flames!”
“Be glad you’re not in it. Kills Twice is tryin’ to tell you something. Anyhow, you made your choice, and that’s part of the price you pay for it. You’ll be lucky if it costs no more than that.” Feeling a touch of sympathy for the young scientist, he nevertheless swung his horse around. “Let it go; come on. The sooner we get off this reservation, the better off we’ll be. And we’ve got a long way to travel before we hit the Badlands.”
Seven
At the Pine Ridge Agency, they turned south, away from their true destination. Fargo knew that they’d been watched all the way across the reservation, and likely would be for a while after they left it. He begrudged the extra time required to confuse the watchers with evasive action, but there was no help for it, and he led the way like an old dog coyote, using every scrap of cover, never riding on the skyline, hiding tracks wherever possible. “Hell,” Stokes said admiringly, “you could give some of the old Sioux I’ve known lessons.”
“It’s somethin’ you learn in my business, or else you don’t stay alive very long. Anyhow, I’ve already made two misjudgments—tryin’ to trail those remounts with only Billy to help me, and thinkin’ Clyde Kills Twice would rather get even with the people that killed his brother than all the rest of the whites. I’m not going to make another mistake, if I can help it.”
Swinging slightly past the Nebraska border, they turned north again, sheltered by the tumbling outer reaches of the Black Hills. Fargo, watching Stokes, was impressed, too. The young man had learned a lot from the Indians about cover and concealment. But he lacked the patience that every fighting man, red or white, must have. “This detour’s taking so much time,” he complained. “Mary Running Deer—”
“Anything they’re gonna do to her,” Fargo cut in brutally, “they’ve already done. We won’t help her by getting ourselves bushwhacked.” It had been two days since they’d cleared the reservation, and now, with an hour of daylight left, they were camped in a narrow, wooded canyon where a shallow cave offered natural shelter. He and Stokes had carefully reconnoitered the broken country before holing up here, and so far there had been nothing to worry about. Nevertheless, the shotgun was across his lap as, sitting before the cave, he said: “Let me see that map again.”
“Cedar Pass on the south, Bigfoot Pass and the Pinnacles on the north, those are the easiest ways in,” Stokes said. “In fact, about the only way we can really get in on horseback.”
“You’d better be pretty good at walkin’ and climbin’,” Fargo said, “because we ain’t goin’ in on horseback.”
Stokes’ eyes widened. “But, my God, man, we’ve got to have horses. We can’t go up against those people without mounts.”
Fargo’s grin was crooked around the cigar. “We’ll git mounts when we need ’em. They’ve got plenty of horses in yonder—fifty, anyhow, that I’m sure of.” He sobered. “You said Custer called those Badlands ‘hell with the fires out.’ Like a big bed of cinders, right?”
“In a way.”
“Okay. Now, you take the ashes of a campfire. A couple of rabbits go across it, nobody could miss seem’ ’em. Other hand, a couple of ants crawl through ’em, who’s gonna see ’em? Men on horseback stand out like rabbits. Men on foot, in a place like that, ain’t nothin’ more than ants. And with horses, you got to keep to the trails where they can travel, cross the passes that are guarded. On foot, two men can go in there damned near anywhere under cover of darkness—right?”
“I suppose ... yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”
“So we don’t tie ourselves down with horses. We’ll need ’em comin’ out, sure, but what we’ll need, we’ll take from them. And if we can’t do that, we’ll be dead anyhow, so it won’t make any difference. I hope you can walk and climb.”
“Don’t worry, I can. On those expeditions, I’ve walked and climbed over places that would made a mountain goat faint. But what about you? A cavalry man without a horse—”
“Don’t worry about me. I keep myself in shape for that kind of thing. I’ve had too many horses shot out from under me to—” He broke off, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Stokes, don’t move or turn around. But you notice anything?”
“Notice? Why, no, I—”
“Then those Indians didn’t train you all that good.” Fargo remained perfectly calm, but his hand slid to the trigger guard of the sawed-off Fox. “Four crows flew up-canyon a while ago. Then two more. This time of night, they go to roost. Now, a second ago, all six of ’em just came back down-canyon on the far side, went into the timber in a different spot. There’s somethin’ up there—somethin’ that scared ’em from their roost. A man’s the only thing I know would do that. Likely a man with a rifle in his hands, or they’d have hung around to caw and jaw. But crows are gun-wise, and they didn’t waste any time. We’re bein’ stalked.”
“Fargo—”
“Now!” Fargo snapped softly. “You roll back in that cave. Hurry!” With one outflung arm, he knocked Stokes backward; then he launched himself into a dive landed, rolled; and at that instant, from close at hand in the woods up-canyon a rifle barked, once, twice. Dirt sprayed the place where Fargo had been.
But he had already made the shelter of a clump of pines, came up bent low, the shotgun in his hands, was plunging through them. The gun roared again, two more times, and behind him he heard the slap of lead, and clipped twigs fell. The fool! Fargo thought, for all the gun sound came from the same place, the man hadn’t even changed position. A hundred and fifty, two hundred yards away, in pines on the canyon wall. And plenty of wooded cover all the way; that would make it easy. Eyes sweeping the terrain ahead, Fargo broke into a lope, making no sound at all on the smooth carpet of pine needles beneath the trees. Swiftly he covered a hundred yards, then froze, slipping behind the two-foot-thick bole of a big jackpine. Ahead, he saw in the murk beneath the trees the easily spotted fabric of a checkered shirt. The gunman was scrambling to his feet, turning away ... Even as Fargo watched, he legged it up the canyon toward where he must have left his horse. Having missed, his nerve was gone, and he wanted to clear out fast.
The range was long for a shotgun. Fargo closed it swiftly, dashing from behind the pine, legs pumping. There was something familiar about that big, slope-shouldered figure scrambling through the trees ahead. Fifty yards, thirty—he closed in that much. Only then did the running man hear him coming and whirl, rifle upraised.
Fargo pulled the Fox’s right trigger, aiming low. The thunderous boom of the weapon almost drowned the scream of the man in the checkered shirt. Then he was lying on his back, torso writhing, one leg kicking, the other, hardly more than a bloody rag, immobile. The rifle, flung from his hands, lay yards away.
Fargo moved forward slowly, shotgun lined.
“All right, Garfield.” His voice rang out harshly above the groaning of the wounded man. “You reach for that Colt on you, you git the other barrel. This time where it kills. You alone?”
“Alone. Schmidt wouldn’t—” He broke off. “My leg. God, Fargo, help me with my leg!” Lon Garfield tried to sit up, fell back, face contorted with pain. It still bore the marks Fargo had put on it in that battle in Donna Clyman’s house.
“Schmidt—” Fargo rasped. Then Garfield’s eyes widened as the Batangas knife was suddenly in his hand. Dropping beside Garfield, he whisked the man’s Colt from holster, slit the blood-soaked right leg of Garfield’s pants. That leg hand taken four of the nine buckshot from the Fox’s barrel, and the man’s thigh was chopped up wickedly. Fortunately for Garfield, none had hit an artery, but for the rest of his life he would be a cripple. Fargo turned to call, but there was movement in the woods, and Stokes was already there, grimacing at the sight of all that blood.
“Git a canteen and that spare shirt out of my gear,” Fargo snap
ped. Without asking questions, Stokes ran back down the canyon. “Schmidt,” Fargo said. “So you’re tied in with him—”
But Garfield made no answer. His eyes were closed, his breathing jerky; he had passed out from shock and pain.
~*~
Begrudging the waste of good whiskey on the man, Fargo had nevertheless poured half a pint of bourbon down Garfield before he went to work, from the bottle he carried in his gear. With no more anesthetic than that, plus a stick to bite down on, Stokes to hold him immobile, Garfield had to endure what first aid Fargo could give. Not wanting to ruin the temper of his own Batangas knife, he used Garfield’s long-bladed pocket knife, heated red hot in a fire, and, by firelight in the shallow cave, went to work, digging out the buckshot. It seemed to take forever, but presently he had them all, had disinfected the wounds with more of the precious whiskey and bound them with strips torn from his own spare shirt. Garfield kept reviving, then passing out, but the treatment was effective. By morning, he was awake, and though in pain, was lucid and rational.
While Stokes looked on, Fargo squatted before him, thumb stroking the razor edge of the open Batangas knife. Garfield stared at the blade in horrified fascination. “All right,” Fargo said. “I didn’t go to all that trouble to patch you up just because I’m big-hearted. You mentioned Schmidt. You’re tied in with him. I want to know how. Now—” He gestured with the knife. “You’re gonna tell me everything you know about him and the Badlands gang, or I’m gonna undo all the work I did last night. And more. Unless you sing, when I git through with you, there won’t be enough left for the crows to eat. Sabe?”
“Fargo, in heaven’s name,” Stokes began, voice shaky.
“Shut up. Well, Garfield?”
Garfield stared into unwinking eyes as cold and gray as slate. He licked his lips. “All right. Just please don’t hurt me anymore.”
“Start talkin’ ”
“Yeah. Well, I am tied in with Schmidt and the Badlands gang. We met in Pierre months ago, in a bar. He’d heard that I ... that I knew how to get a lot of guns and other stuff, and he needed ’em. Only then he didn’t have the money to pay for ’em. But he gave me a list, said to start linin’ up the stuff. I told him it would take a while, what with the war. He said, all right; it would take a while to git the money, too. And I been in touch with him ever since.”
“I reckon you aimed to swindle him, just like you’ve done everybody else ever made a deal with you.”
“No, not him. I ain’t that much a fool ...” Garfield paused, grimacing with pain. “You don’t swindle a man like Schmidt. You don’t cross him no way. I got him the guns—part of ’em. He robbed one bank, used that to pay for ’em. And ever since he hit the Rapid City bank, I been linin’ up another shipment.”
“So you just decided to swindle Donna Clyman instead.”
Garfield closed his eyes. “It was Schmidt’s idea. He knew she was the big stockholder in the bank, and that she wouldn’t stand still for what had happened. He sent me to her to find out what she aimed to do—and to git the job of doin’ it from her if I could. Freeze you out, if you tried. He was worried about you, after the way you slaughtered his men, when they took those remounts. Wanted you outa business, one way or another. After you beat the hell outa me at that woman’s house, I went to him, asked him for some men to help me get you. But he’d lost too many, said he wouldn’t take the risk—unless you came after him. So by God, I figured to get even on my own. I been trailin’ you across the reservation, followin’ you the whole time, waitin’ to get in a shot. Dammit, I thought I had you cold, and then—” He shook his head in disbelief. “I still don’t know what happened.”
“What happened is that you’re a second-rater and always will be,” Fargo said thinly. “So you’ve been in the Badlands, eh? You know where Schmidt hides out in there?”
Garfield was silent. Fargo edged the knife point forward toward his throat. “Well?”
“I know. He changed hide-outs. But right now he’s on a place called Sheep Mountain. Up on top, there’s graze for them horses he stole from you. And all around it there’s the damnedest canyons and cliffs you ever saw; only one trail up, and that’s a bitch.” Garfield closed his eyes. “It’s like a nightmare in there. But with the guns and ammo he’s got now, and the way that place is, no matter how many come after him, he can stand ’em off.”
“Sheep Mountain.” Fargo turned to Stokes. “You know it?”
“I know it,” Stokes answered. “It’s like he says. If they’ve got that trail guarded, we’ll never get up there.”
“We’ll worry about that later. All right, Garfield. How many men does Schmidt have in there with him?”
“After all you and that Injun killed, maybe thirty. Maybe more. A few drift in every day—draft dodgers, deserters, gunmen ... some of ’em from Canada ...”
“And the weapons. How many, what kind, have you delivered him?”
“Three hundred rifles so far, with fifty rounds for each. Fifty pistols, Mausers, like the German army uses. And a hundred fragmentation grenades I managed to lay my hands on. That’s just the first batch, for his own people to use. The second batch—he was gonna pay for it with the Rapid City bank money—he’d spread out to the Injuns on the reservation. Then he figured to really raise some hell.”
“Yeah,” Fargo said. “Schmidt himself. What about him?”
“He’s German. Like you, a soldier of fortune. Was down in the South American diamond camps, then come north to Mexico, fought against Zapata down south there. He’s big, mean, smart, and he’s hell with any kind of gun or his fists.” A kind of spiteful grin twitched Garfield’s face. “He ain’t no second-rater. You’ll find that out, if you go up against him.” The grin went away. “Fargo, my leg ... I got to have a doctor.”
Fargo stood up. “We’re a little short of doctors.”
“Then you got to git me to one ... Please, I’ll pay. I got money stashed—”
“Sorry,” Fargo said, and he closed the knife. “You’ll have to find your own doctor. Me and Stokes, we got other fish to fry. And they can’t wait while we lug you around the country.”
“But for God’s sake, man—”
“Neal, really—” Stokes cut in.
Fargo said coldly: “Be glad you got as much break as you have, Garfield. You got an even chance, which is about twice what you deserve. We’re leavin’ you water, cooked food for three days, and a horse. I pried all the bullets out and there’s a fair chance your leg’ll be fit for you to ride in that time. Then you can git your own self to a doctor. Me, I don’t give a damn whether you make it or not. But—” his voice was like ice. “I’ll tell you one thing, Garfield. If you do, and if you ever come at me again, next time it won’t be the leg I’ll shoot for. Remember that.” He turned away. “Stokes, let’s pack our gear and catch up the horses. Didn’t you hear Garfield? Every day we wait, Schmidt’s outfit gets stronger.”
Stokes stared at him, pale-faced. “What kind of man are you?” he whispered.
“A professional,” Fargo said. “And either you act like one too, or you stay behind.”
His gaze locked with that of Stokes for a moment. Then the younger man looked away. “I’ll get the horses,” he said.
~*~
Two days later, not long before sundown, Fargo drew rein at the edge of a clump of juniper. “Well,” he said quietly, “there they are.” Ahead, the prairie rolled in waves, lush with grass. Then suddenly, in the distance, there were the Big Badlands of South Dakota, and, looking at them through the heat shimmer, even Neal Fargo was touched with awe.
From this distance they resembled a gigantic, eerie city designed by a mad architect. Wind and water had carved earth into immense, fantastic shapes—spires, domes, arches, formations resembling enormous castles or cathedrals; others like nothing anyone could imagine—eroded raw-dirt nightmares, naked peaks and mesas with flanks gouged and serrated with gullies, washes, revealing stratum after stratum of various sorts of earth pu
t down in layers over the centuries, each glowing with a different color in the last slanting sunlight. All across the horizon it sprawled, that vast, upthrusting bulwark of tormented earth, raising itself hundreds of feet toward the sky. No, Fargo thought, not a city—a fortress, maybe one that was impregnable. After all, at the time of Wounded Knee, rebellious Sioux had stood off the U.S. Army here for a whole winter.
“Sheep Mountain,” he asked Stokes. “Which one is it?”
“That real high one to the west. You can just see the grass up on top of it.”
Fargo scanned it with binoculars. A hell of a hill to take—with two men against three dozen, maybe more. All around its base, the Badlands were at their worst. And yet maybe that was a kind of advantage, a hole card in his and Stokes’ hand. Men hiding out up there, with the one precarious trail Stokes said existed well watched by guards, would consider themselves safe. Maybe get a little over-confident. Over-confidence on the one hand, the element of surprise on the other—that made a pair of cards to draw to. But a pair was a slim hand to play against a crowd like Schmidt’s, holding the full-house advantage of possession of the high ground, superior numbers, and all the weapons they could use.
Casing his binoculars, Fargo swung down, began to loosen saddle cinches. “Gonna be a bitch. Well, we’ll wait here until good black dark. Then we ride all night, until we get under cover ...”
~*~
In the shelter of the brush they waited and made their preparations.
Fargo checked his weapons, insisted Stokes do the same, including those they had taken from Lon Garfield. And then, carefully, he went over the ropes. There were three of them, his own, Stokes’, and the one from Garfield’s saddle. Fastened together with expert sheet-bends, they made a total of about a hundred and fifty feet of line; maybe not enough, but it would have to do. They ate cold rations, and then there was nothing to do but wait.